Survival
by somehowunbroken
Summary: Everything can fall apart in an instant, and it is in that instant that you find out what everything means to you. One-shot.


Warning: Character death. Not warning whose; that gives it away. If you don't like to read this type of stuff, try my story McWho? which is much more lighthearted.

* * *

Everything can fall apart in an instant, and it is in that instant that you find out what _everything_ means to you.

The reason it hurt so much, McGee supposed, was that it was entirely unexpected. The one safe place, the only truly safe place that he could imagine, was inside NCIS. It wasn't just that it was inside the Navy Yard, where even the package delivery boys were vetted before they were allowed to step on site. It wasn't just the metal detectors and security guards that everyone was required to pass through every day. It wasn't just that everyone inside was armed and trained to protect.

No, it was the family that he had here that made this a safe place. It was trust and the easygoing belief that nothing could touch his family that McGee loved. It was the reason that he felt safe here. In his mind, they truly were a family. Gibbs, both parents in one. Ducky, the grandfather who always slipped you candy when your mother wasn't looking. The rest of them, closer than siblings could ever be.

That's why when it happened, when everything fell apart, nobody was expecting it.

It hadn't been a busy day. In fact, it had been almost record-breakingly slow. They had finished their paperwork before lunch was even a consideration, and nobody new had been killed. The team was wasting time. Tony was teasing McGee about the newest installment in his series.

"What's this one called, McGee? _I Stole This Material From My Real Job_?"

"Funny, Tony," McGee had replied. "I'm calling it _Traces of Evidence_, but that's really just a working title."

"Why do you write these stories, McGee?" Ziva had questioned.

"I like to think that part of me will live on after I'm gone," he had replied. "You can't ever really forget what's left on paper. Not completely."

Tony had rolled his eyes. "Birth certificates are paper too, Probie. So is all this…" he gestured to the piles on his desk. "What's it called again? Oh, yeah, _paper_work."

"You laugh now," McGee had said. "Out of everyone here, I'm the one who's going to survive."

Tony had groaned and muttered about melodrama, but Ziva had smiled. "Perhaps I will write a book, too."

Eventually, as it drew nearer and nearer to 1800, when Gibbs would let them go home, the entire family gathered in the bullpen – Abby, up from her lab, sitting on McGee's desk; Ducky and Palmer, leaning on the partitions near Ziva's desk, looking at something on her computer screen. Even Gibbs was smiling, telling them that he might even go out for pizza with them, why not?

It was one of the images that would haunt McGee. Gibbs, leaning back in his chair, actually looking relaxed for once, smiling a genuine smile.

Then, in a split second, everything changed.

McGee wasn't sure what had happened at first. There was a noise, and then there was fire, and then he was throwing himself across his desk at Abby, pushing her to the floor, covering her head and her neck and trying to protect his own at the same time. There was fire, and there was pain.

There was screaming.

The noise settled around McGee, and he leaned back, off of Abby, and checked himself for injuries. He was bruised, was cut, but was otherwise fine. Something had blown up, he realized. Inside the Navy yard. Inside NCIS. How was that even possible? He looked back down to ask Abby, but the question never made it past his lips.

She was pale. Paler than usual, even. There was a crimson stain on her side, and McGee could see a piece of something sticking out of the material, right where that stain was. Abby's eyes were closed, and her breathing was unsteady, uneven, far too shallow for anything good.

"Boss?" McGee yelled, panicked. "Ducky! Abby's really, really…"

And then he looked up.

McGee was in the only part of the bullpen that even remotely resembled a building anymore. The catwalk had crumbled in the explosion, and the twisted metal hung loosely from its girders, swinging slightly as if pushed by a breeze. The windows, which had looked out over a view that McGee had often taken for granted, were all shattered.

Palmer. Palmer had been standing right by the windows a second before the blast. McGee hastily stood and made his way to where the windows had been. Palmer was lying there, very still. Blood still seeped from the thousands of tiny cuts, tiny glass shards, that had pierced his body.

He wasn't breathing.

"Palmer." McGee knelt next to the young medical examiner. "Jimmy. Jimmy, please, come on, man, please…"

That was another image that would haunt McGee.

Then he saw Ducky, sitting in a bizarrely usual position, with his back to the partition and his legs straight out in front of him. McGee saw that his chest was still rising and falling. "Ducky?"

"Tim…othy," Ducky wheezed. "I seem… to have lost… my glasses. Do you know… where they might be?" The pauses in the older man's speech nearly choked the air out of McGee.

"I don't see them, Ducky," he said, trying to keep his voice calm. "You just sit there, okay, and I'll find them for you."

Ducky nodded and smiled a macabre smile. Blood trickled slowly down his left arm.

McGee went back into the bullpen area. He quickly glanced at Abby; her chest still rose and fell in that bizarre rhythm. He moved to Ziva's desk first.

Her computer screen was still on. It was the first thing that McGee noticed; how could the computer still work? Even the lights were off. They had been looking at pictures of Ziva's cousin's newest baby. The writing was in Hebrew. He didn't know Hebrew, couldn't read it, didn't know what the baby's name was.

Ziva could no longer tell him what it was. She could no longer tell him anything.

The blast had thrown a piece of shrapnel through her chest. McGee found it almost hilariously cliché; it was like a terrible horror film in which all the protagonists died in hackneyed, overdramatic ways. The bloody hole was in her upper torso. Where her heart should have been. McGee reached out, tried to close the wound with his hands, tried to hide it from his eyes. He pulled off his jacket – _was that blood there when I put it on this morning?_ – and draped it over her. Maybe the darkness under there would help the cut to close.

He couldn't see Tony from Ziva's desk. Where was Tony?

McGee almost tripped over the older agent as he stumbled to his desk. Tony was stretched across the floor. He had been standing, McGee remembered. Laughing. At something he'd said.

"Tony," McGee croaked. Tony shifted, only slightly, but McGee bent frantically, turning his friend onto his back. Tony's eyes were open.

"McGee?" Tony replied, voice distant. "What's… why are the lights off?"

McGee frowned and looked around. Yes, the lights were off, but it wasn't as if it was pitch black; it was barely 1800. Realization and horror dawned on the young agent. He waved his hand in front of Tony's face, slowly at first, then faster.

"Where's that wind coming from?" Tony's voice was hoarse. "It wasn't there a minute ago."

"Tony, can you see my hand?" McGee tried to keep his voice calm.

"No, Probie, it's dark in here." Tony's voice, though scratchy, was full of reproach.

"No, it's not," McGee replied. He almost choked on the sob in his chest. "I can see you. I can see everything. My hand is right in front of your face, Tony."

Tony reached out and grabbed McGee's hand, stopping the waving motion. "Not funny, McGee, turn the damn lights on!"

"Tony, stay here, stay down, okay?" McGee couldn't keep the panic, the fear, the sadness out of his voice. "I need to check on Gibbs. I need to…"

McGee's voice faltered as he approached the last desk in what had been the bullpen. Gibbs was facedown, arms loosely hanging by his sides, looking for all the world like he was taking a nap on his desk.

"Boss?" McGee choked out. He reached down, his hand hesitantly hovering over Gibbs' shoulder. "Boss, please, don't do this. Please wake up. Boss. Gibbs. Jethro. Wake up, please…"

McGee didn't know he was crying until Tony's voice carried over to him. "McGee!" He turned, eyes burry and chest heaving. Tony was standing, wobbly on his feet, but standing. He was trying to pick his way through the rubble he could no longer see to where McGee was standing, and the younger agent rushed to him. He placed his hand on Tony's arm.

"Here, Tony," he said, but wasn't sure if anything he said was even words any more.

"What happened?" Tony's voice was trying to stay calm, to be an agent, to do as he was trained, but McGee could hear the unbridled panic.

"There was an explosion," McGee tried to explain. "Ziva's… and Gibbs…"

McGee was wracked with sobs, and could speak no more.

--

Everything was a blur. There were paramedics, and a fire rescue team, and there were black bags _bring them to Ducky he'll take care of them _and then there were screaming sirens and flashing lights. There were doctors who used words like "miracle" and "unbelievable" and "in shock." There were people, in and out of the room he was in, and _where is Tony? _and there was an IV going into his arm, and McGee only wanted to know that Tony was okay, because he remembered Tony talking, Tony trying to walk _Tony can't see anything he needs my help_ and oh God, oh God, and then he fell into unconsciousness.

--

The steady hum of machinery welcomed McGee back to consciousness some time later. He had no idea where he was, or why he was there, or why his sister was sleeping in an uncomfortable-looking chair, or why Sarah was there at all.

"Sarah," he tried, but no sound escaped his lips. He attempted to clear his throat, but again found that he could produce no sound. McGee gripped the railing on his bed and gave it a good, hard shake, and Sarah jumped from her seat, startled awake by the clatter.

"Tim," she breathed, and some of the lines around her eyes vanished. "Oh, God, Tim." She reached for his hand and buried her face in it, and McGee could feel her tears gathering in his palm.

"Sarah," he finally managed to say, and she looked at his face. "What…"

"There was an explosion," she said softly. "At NCIS. A terrorist attack."

McGee closed his eyes and images flashed across his mind, too quickly too see them all, but some, some were too garish to be ignored.

"Ziva," he gasped, eyes flying open. "Gibbs." He felt a burning in his throat. He was too dehydrated to cry.

Sarah closed her eyes. "Not now," she told him. "You'll pass out again."

McGee shook his head. "Tony," he said firmly. "Tony was…" He didn't know what Tony was, only knew that he hadn't been… that he had been walking.

"He's here too," Sarah said. "He's going to make it." McGee sagged back against the bed. He wanted to ask, wanted to know, needed to know about the rest of his family, but he couldn't bear the thoughts. Didn't want to know. Didn't want to remember.

"Later," he sighed, and closed his eyes again.

--

When McGee opened his eyes again, Sarah was gone. In her place was an older gentleman that McGee had never met, had only seen in photographs hanging on the Director's wall. McGee cleared his throat, and the man looked up.

"Mr. Secretary," McGee said, and found that his voice was back in working condition. A little gravelly, to be certain, but it was no longer hard to force out words.

"Agent McGee," Secretary of the Navy Phillip Davenport said. "Good to see you're awake."

"My team, sir," McGee asked. "How… who…" Though the ability to speak had returned to him, the ability to force out difficult questions had not become any easier to find.

Davenport sighed. "I don't think we should do this right now," he said, but McGee's gaze was resolute. "What do you remember?"

McGee closed his eyes and felt his throat tighten. "Light. Heat. Everything was flying around, and I tried to protect Abby, but she got hurt anyway. Then Palmer." His voice shook, but he pressed on. "He was already… when I found him. And Ducky, Ducky was disoriented, I think, because all he talked about was how he couldn't find his glasses." McGee took a deep breath, trying to clear the knot in his throat.

"Ziva…" Here he stopped. Tears pooled in his closed eyes and slipped out somehow, trailing down his cheeks and falling to the blanket below. "There was a hole in her," McGee said slowly, dully. "Here." He motioned to his own chest, his own heart. "Tony was on the floor, but he was moving and breathing and talking, and he was okay except he thought the lights were off. I mean, they were off, we had no power." He frowned again. "But Ziva's computer was still on."

Davenport waited patiently.

"And Gibbs," McGee said softly, tears dripping freely from his chin. "He could have been sleeping. I asked him to wake up, begged him to wake up, but he didn't even move, not once."

Davenport didn't say a word. He sat in the chair at McGee's bedside, giving the young man a chance to collect himself.

"Agent DiNozzo will be out of the hospital in a week or two," Davenport began. "He lost his eyesight completely in his left eye, and they're not sure if he'll regain anything in the right. Other than that, he's fine."

Blind. Tony was blind. How could he watch movies if he was blind?

"Dr. Mallard is in very serious condition," Davenport continued. "He's in the ICU. He lost a lot of blood, broke a lot of bones, and at his age, it's more serious than it would be for someone your age."

Ducky was in ICU. "Will he…"

"It's too soon to say," Davenport replied. "The doctors want to be optimistic, but they just can't tell yet."

McGee heard the pause in the older man's voice. His heart dropped to his stomach. "Abby."

"Miss Sciuto…" Davenport exhaled. "She wasn't conscious, Agent McGee. She hit her head pretty hard in the fall. She didn't feel it."

"Didn't feel it," McGee repeated numbly.

"She was gone before the paramedics even got to the scene," Davenport said, studying his hands.

McGee shook his head vehemently. "No. She was alive, she was breathing. She had something in her side…" His hands trailed unconsciously down his own torso, stopping when they reached the spot where Abby had–

"Didn't feel it," McGee said again. "Didn't feel it."

Davenport was still talking, about Cynthia and Vance and some other agents that McGee didn't care about at all, and all he could think to himself was, _Abby. Gibbs. Ziva. Palmer._

_Abby._

--

McGee was released that afternoon into Sarah's care.

"Let's go home, Tim," she said to him. McGee shook his head.

"Tony," he said. "I want to visit Tony. And Ducky."

Sarah knew better than to resist, so they took the elevator up instead of down. A quick stop at the nurse's station gave them a number and McGee found himself standing at the doorway of a room with only one bed. Someone was in it, wrapped in gauze and blankets and hooked up to so many machines, and though he'd already done so, McGee checked the room number again. It still matched the one the nurse had given him. He took a deep breath.

"I'll give you a minute," Sarah said quietly to him, backing towards the nurse's station again.

McGee took a step into the room and the person in the bed turned.

"McGee?" the person said in Tony's voice. "Is it you?"

"How could you possibly know that?" McGee asked, amazed, for a moment forgetting the horror of the situation.

Tony lifted a shoulder. "I know what you sound like when you walk. It's amazing what you realize you know when you can't use your eyes anymore."

Reality came crashing down around McGee again. "Yeah," he said softly. "I guess that's true."

"The doctor's hopeful, though," Tony said, almost casually. "Thinks I'll be able to see out of my right eye, maybe even be able to drive."

"You can drive with only one eye?"

"Sure. If the vision in that eye is good enough." The nonchalance in his voice was becoming strained, and McGee realized that his friend didn't want to hope, didn't want to believe that he might get some semblance of his old life back.

"Wow," was all McGee could think to say.

"Yeah. Wow." Tony shifted as Sarah walked into the room. "Who's that?"

"Sarah," she replied. "Tim's sister. We met once, when you and…" she trailed off, looking at McGee.

"I remember you," Tony said, a grin finally cracking on his face. "You're the one who told us all about McGee's book. Or, should I say, Mr. Thom E. Gemcity's book."

Sarah rolled her eyes. "That was me." She leaned to Tony conspiratorially. "He still hasn't forgiven me, you know."

"He'll get over it eventually," Tony said lightly, turning his face back to where McGee stood. "Won't you?"

"Consider yourself forgiven," McGee said. "Uh, Sarah, could you give us a minute?"

Sarah nodded, then spoke aloud with a glance at Tony. "Sure, Tim. I'll be out at the nurse's station when you're ready."

Sarah left, and McGee looked at Tony. "What have they told you?"

Tony shrugged. "Not much. Davenport was in here, told me something exploded. Terrorists." He snorted. "Gibbs is gonna kill them for blowing us all up when we catch them."

The silence stretched out for so long that Tony eventually said, "McGee? You still here?"

"Tony," he said softly, "Gibbs won't be able to catch them." He waited for a moment. Tony sat, very still, in his bed.

"Gibbs is dead," he finally said. "In the explosion."

McGee nodded, remembered, and said, "Yeah." His eyes watered, and he made no effort to keep the tears from falling.

Tony slumped back against the bed. "How is…"

McGee cut him off. "Ducky's here too, somewhere. I'm off to see him when I leave here. He's still in a coma. My nurse told me they think he's going to pull through, but he lost an arm."

"An arm," Tony echoed. When McGee didn't go on, Tony pressed. "Everyone else?"

A sob was all McGee could manage. He fell into the chair beside Tony's desk and cried. He heard Tony crying, too, and didn't know how she knew but Sarah was there, holding him in her arms, rocking him back and forth. Her silent tears streamed down her face and splashed into McGee's hair.

--

McGee arranged Gibbs' funeral himself. Everyone else had family, had someone, but Gibbs had only had his father, and when McGee had offered to arrange everything for the elderly man, he had quickly agreed. Jackson traveled to DC for the service. He looked withered, ancient, and the grief in his eyes was almost too much to take. McGee had cried all the tears he could manage, though, so he was able to shake the other man's hand and accept his thanks for "taking care of things."

"It's no problem," he told the elder Gibbs roughly. "He was like… like a father to me." McGee cut his speech off short. How could he have tears left in him?

He went to all the funerals that he could, even for the agents he hadn't known. He flew to Tel Aviv for Ziva's funeral service, had shaken hands with the Director of Mossad, had seen the question _why her, why not you?_ in his eyes. He was at Abby's funeral in Louisiana. He went to Ohio to bury Palmer. So many places, so many bodies, so many dead.

Twelve dead in all. Besides himself, Tony, and Ducky, only three other people had survived. Davenport had said that it had been lucky that the blast was timed when it was, at the end of the day; if it had been in the middle of the day, he pointed out, more lives would have been lost.

McGee had asked if he was supposed to be comforted by this.

Davenport hadn't had an answer.

--

They held their own service, two months later, in the basement of Gibbs' house. The three survivors stood around his boat, drinking his bourbon, talking and thinking and wishing to God that the master of the house would burst in the door at the top of the stairs, stare menacingly, and ask them what the hell they thought they were doing in his basement? But they knew better. Only the pictures of their friends, their colleagues, their family, were there with them that night.

Ducky had only been released from Bethesda the week before. He looked older, thinner, paler, and his voice shook as it never had in the past. He didn't tell stories anymore.

Tony had regained limited sight in his right eye, but still couldn't drive; he had adapted, learned, figured things out, and was busy trying to decide what he would do for the rest of his life. Field work was no job for a blind agent, and Tony had never been one for desk work.

"Not too many jobs for a blind cop," he joked, but it made McGee uncomfortable. How could he be so blasé about… well, everything?

McGee helped Ducky into his house. Ducky thanked him and smiled feebly. McGee frowned as he left, unsure that Ducky would be able to last for long on his own. He looked so frail, so old, and though he tried to hide it, Ducky was depressed about all that had happened.

When he got back to the car, Tony turned to him. "You were right," he said, a haunted tone in his voice.

McGee blinked, trying to place the context. "About…"

"Living on. Your writing. Something being left when you're done." He paused. "I've got nothing."

McGee sat in the driver's seat, hands perfectly at ten and two. Tony's memory of that day was still fragmented, still fuzzy. Of all the things that he could have recalled…

"I didn't exactly mean it like this," he finally responded. "And you survived, too, and Ducky."

Tony snorted. "No, Probie, we lived through it. We didn't survive it."

McGee looked questioningly at Tony. "You're still alive," he said, confused.

"Alive, yeah, but did I survive? Can I go back to my day job when I'm better?" Tony spoke mockingly, and where McGee would once have found offense he now saw his friend hurting. "I only have half an eye left, McGee. Ducky only has one of his arms. Everyone else is_ dead_." He stopped.

McGee couldn't think of a single thing to say. Tony filled in the silence.

"She said she wanted to write a book," he recalled. "I wonder what she would have called it. _Ninja Techniques for the Everyday Woman_?" Tony's voice was bitter now. "I would have read it. I would have liked it, would have learned from it, but I never would have told her. Would've teased her like I tease you."

Tony stopped, and McGee realized that they were still sitting in front of Ducky's house. He started the car and pulled away from the curb, heading to Tony's apartment.

"You're the only one who survived," Tony said later, when McGee was walking with him to his apartment. Tony couldn't see very well in the dark now. McGee always made sure he got home safely. "The one of us who can go on."

McGee sat heavily on Tony's couch. "I don't want to go on."

"You have to," Tony said immediately. "Not now, maybe not even here. But you have to go back, go on, do what we do."

McGee shook his head. "Every scientist won't be Abby, every other agent won't be you guys, every boss won't be Gibbs. I can't do that, Tony."

"Oh, the irony." Tony's mouth lifted at the edge as he sat next to McGee. "I'm the one who can see this, not you. You have to go on for those exact reasons."

McGee looked at Tony. "What?"

"Do it for them," he said quietly. "Do it for Ducky. Do it for me." Tony looked away and swallowed. "You lived, McGee. Do what the rest of us can't do and _survive_."

The two men sat in the dark living room, not speaking, not talking, just remembering.

A smile. A dark pigtail. A confused idiom. A laugh. A knife. A look. A headslap. Voices. Music. Love.

Family.

For the first time, the memories made McGee smile.


End file.
